


Keep Calling For Me (Because One Day, I'll Find You)

by holographicbubbles



Series: Elsamaren Summer!! [3]
Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Elsamaren Summer 2020 (Disney), F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:14:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25245211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holographicbubbles/pseuds/holographicbubbles
Summary: "It was her fifth birthday the first time Elsa felt it. The day had been spent in festivities, with games and sweets and cake to top it all off. It had started as a small… tug, a feeling of longing in her chest, but gradually grew into what felt like a gaping hole in her heart. Like there was something missing. Like she was incomplete.Her mother told her that it was natural to feel a pull, that it happened to everyone.But Elsa didn’t miss her worried glance at her father when Elsa mentioned that it felt like it wanted to take her far northbound."Or, snippets of Elsa's life on her path to finding completion.Elsamaren Summer 2020, Day 3 - “Are you the one I’ve been looking for all of my life?”
Relationships: Elsa/Honeymaren (Disney)
Series: Elsamaren Summer!! [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827406
Comments: 17
Kudos: 47
Collections: Elsamaren Summer 2020





	Keep Calling For Me (Because One Day, I'll Find You)

**Author's Note:**

> If you're asking: Al, is this a weird soulmates AU that probably makes no sense? 
> 
> Then I am: not answering that because yes. I read the prompt and my mind went immediately to " FINALLY AN EXCUSE TO WRITE A SOULMATES AU" and it somehow ended up one of my favorite works that i've written haha
> 
> Happy non-binary awareness week again! I'm very excited, can't you see lmao
> 
> and I'm also very excited because it's disability pride month! So happy disability pride month again!

It was her fifth birthday the first time Elsa felt it. The day had been spent in festivities, with games and sweets and cake to top it all off. It had started as a small… tug, a feeling of longing in her chest, but gradually grew into what felt like a gaping hole in her heart. Like there was something missing. Like she was incomplete.

Her mother told her that it was natural to feel a pull, that it happened to everyone.

But Elsa didn’t miss her worried glance at her father when Elsa mentioned that it felt like it wanted to take her far northbound. 

_(Elsa lay, curled up, on a frozen floor, fingertips blue.)_

Anna was three when she started feeling a longing. Unlike Elsa, who said that it made her feel sad and trapped, Anna said that she felt warm. Happy. Safe. That instead of feeling pulled in a lost direction, Anna felt warmth right where she was. 

Elsa didn’t envy Anna though. She hadn’t even felt the pull in a long time, so it probably didn’t really exist.

_(Elsa’s heart fluttered, reminding her that there was still someone there.)_

It was the day before her seventh birthday the second time Elsa felt the yearning, the aching desire for something- _someone_ just beyond her reach. She’d been more prepared for it now, and better understood why it happened. 

_“Mama, Papa,”_ Elsa had finally asked her parents one evening. _“Why do we feel our soulmates in our hearts?”_

Her parents had shared a look before looking back to Elsa and handing her a cup of tea. _“Remember to blow,”_ they had warned, but she knew that already, she was growing up and really didn’t need a reminder to do something so silly. 

_“Well, Elsa,”_ her father had pressed his finger to her chest. _“Because that way we always know that they’re there. And we can call for them too. We can call out with our love and hope that they listen to us. But you know how sometimes you might feel an emotion that isn’t your own very strongly?”_

Elsa had nodded. 

Her mother had taken up where her father left off. _“You’re bonded by the prominent emotion in your soulmate. So if your soulmate is primarily happy, you’ll feel their happiness and see what causes them joy.”_

 _‘Everyone feels that pull, Elsa, because there’s someone out there that your heart is calling for,’_ she’d said. _‘Your soulmate. And one day, you’ll meet them, and the broken fragments of your puzzled hearts will grow into one.’_

Elsa, to be honest, probably couldn’t care less about being connected. So what if there was someone out there that her heart wanted? Hearts were stupid anyway. She didn’t want whoever her heart did, because whoever they were, they made her chest feel all bad and achy and sad and trapped. So she didn’t like them. Why should she like someone she’d never met?

It was a shaky outlook on something as natural to everyone as breathing. But Elsa didn’t care.

It _didn’t_ bother her that Anna felt so warm all the time, so in place all the time, and that Elsa had to reside to feeling so trapped inside a harrow pain. A harrow pain of longing, for a taste of freedom that Elsa thought she had. And why didn’t she? She had a doting pair of parents who loved her like they loved no other. She had everything she could have possibly needed or wanted, and then some.

As night fell on the eve of her birthday, she watched in horror as her room clouded over in a mist that was too thick to breathe in. 

_(I’m sorry that I can’t stay for you, Elsa thought.)_

The third time she felt it, she was eight. She and Anna were playing in the ballroom, after Anna had dragged Elsa out of bed with, _‘my heart’s awake and so is the sky! I wanna play!’_

“Elsa, Elsa, Elsa,” Anna said, grabbing Elsa’s hand in hers and dragging her across a frosted floor. “I think I found my soulmate!”

Elsa giggled, rolling her eyes. Anna tended to say absurd things like this every other day. “Oh really? Who is it?”

Anna dragged her to their snowman that they had built, “Olaf!” she exclaimed, hugging it. 

“I don’t think Olaf’s your soulmate,” Elsa said, shaking her head. Anna pouted, but it was quickly replaced by what one could argue was a smug grin, knowing she had Elsa wrapped around her finger. 

“I wanna play slide.”

Elsa created a large pile of snow for Anna to slide down, chuckling quietly at her little sister’s antics. “Catch me!” she exclaimed. 

Elsa did, creating another pile of snow for Anna to jump to. And again, again, again, until her hands were shooting ice out in front her faster than she could blink. “Anna…” she warned, but the five-year old just kept jumping. Elsa’s eyes widened, her mouth opening in a silent scream as she started to lose her footing.

“Anna!”

Elsa rushed forward to cradle her sister’s body, which had fallen to the ice with a sickening thud. Elsa’s heart roared like an open fire, pain and fear and agony crackling in angry sparks. Angry, welting burns on pale skin. 

“No, no, no, no-”

_(“I'M SORRY!!!!!!” Elsa screamed.)_

Elsa was thirteen now, locked away in a room filled with frightening shadows and mist only she could see. Her fingers were pressed taut to her chest, frozen in place like a tongue against a metal pole. She hadn’t felt the longing strain in a long time, over three years and a half. She hoped that… whoever they were, whoever was out there, that they were okay. That they hadn’t given up on her and that they still were calling.

Whether or not she wanted to meet them, she still cared for their wellbeing. _Whether or not you would be alive to meet them,_ a little voice whispered in the back of her mind. _Because monsters like you don’t deserve to live long enough to meet your soulmate._ Still, Elsa hoped that they were okay. Whoever her soulmate was deserved a happy life, after all. 

Unlike Elsa. There was nothing left for Elsa.

_(There was nothing left at all.)_

Elsa weakly opened her eyes, struggling to find the strength to do so. 

It had been far too long since she’d sent out a reminder of her existence to her soulmate, so she assumed that they had given up on her. Forgotten her. That they'd sed her up and threw her away, just like everyone else did. Elsa had thought, maybe, that the person she was connected to in a bond that broke space and time, well, she’d thought that maybe they would have cared. 

That maybe there really was someone out there who she mattered to.

But it wasn’t like she’d felt anything from her soulmate, either, so it had been a naive wish. She stared through her window. 

And her gaze drifted over the open sea just in time to see a boat, so small it might have been a speck of dust, go under the waves.

For the first time in over nine years, Elsa lost control.

_(Elsa floated along somewhere, sinking slowly into the waves as regret after fear after tormenting sadness weighed her heart down.)_

The storm never ceased.

_(Snow pattered Elsa’s face, freezing to her pale cheeks.)_

“Please,” she whispered, to no one in particular but the silence. “Let me go too.”

She was so alone, so alone, so _ALONE-_

_(But Anna… Elsa had left her behind, as always...)_

She pulled the black mourning dress off of its post. Her jaw quivered as she stared down at it, the idea of dressing a weight that she wasn’t sure she could bear. Her parents were gone, and if this-

If wearing this-

If doing this and wearing that and going there and-

If doing all of that meant that it finalized the decision, made it reality, made it so that where Elsa’s future was no longer in her hands-

 _Was it ever?_ A little voice inside asked her. She shrunk into herself, wrapping her arms tightly around her middle as she watched the snowflakes in her room pause in their floating and stay suspended in the air. 

_I don’t…_ she sobbed, burying her face into the scratchy fabric of the mourning dress. _I don’t wanna be alone._

_(Anna… Elsa… The Northul-)_

“Sem hon heldr inum helgum eignum ok krýnd í þessum helga stað ek té fram fyrir yðr ... Queen Elsa of Arendelle.”

“Queen Elsa of Arendelle.”

And here she was, alone.

She had long since figured out that it would stay that way. Even the one person that was meant to care for her and love her the most, even they had given up.

_(“I finally know who you are, Elsa… Please don’t let me lose you, not so soon after I found you!”)_

The days had gone by in blurs, frustrating snippets floating back to her and away in less time than it took to blink. But her wrists were cuffed and the skin at the edges of the cuffs burned ablaze, chafing skin and scraping away until there was nothing left.

“Just take it all from me,” she whispered, again, to no one in particular. “I really have lost almost it all.”

Anna-

_(“Don’t go-”)_

“Your sister is dead,” Hans seethed, his teeth clamping together loudly enough that Elsa could hear it. “Because of _you.”_

_(“El….”)_

“Anna?”

Elsa fell into her sister's arms, sobbing. “You sacrificed yourself for me?”

“I love you,” Anna whispered.

Elsa squeezed her eyes tightly shut, sealed away from the horrors that the world had inflicted on her…

And worse yet, the ones she’d brought upon the world.

But _love?_

_Anna loves me?_

“Love…”

_(It’s peaceful, she thought, yet I’m alone again… isn’t that just the way I was always meant to be?)_

“I think… you know,” Anna said a later night, one palm in Elsa’s and the other splayed behind her head. “That Kristoff is the one.”

“How would you know?” Elsa asked, lip trembling. Anna squeezed her hand.

“Well…” she began. “It’s always been his happiness for me. And I can feel it, in my heart, like a warm fire set alight,” she breathed out through her lips, a dreamy sigh echoing through Elsa’s room. “And now… I’ll have these bursts of energy, and it’s a good, warm energy, and I know that it’s his. And I’ll look over at him, and he’ll just have a big smile on his face… or he’ll be playing a game with you… or he’ll just, you know, seem truly, genuinely happy. And now, with him, I feel... I feel complete, like my heart is no longer a puzzle. Kristoff Bjorgman of The Valley of Living Rock is… he’s my soulmate.”

_(Silence. Empty, suffocating silence.)_

“May I?”

Elsa nodded, offering her hand to Honeymaren. A blush lit up her face when she realized that her hand was not what Maren had in mind, and quickly switched to giving her the scarf.

“You know, air, fire, water and earth…” Maren traced her fingers over the pattern on the scarf, tan skin bouncing between mauve embroidered diamonds.

“Yes,” Elsa nodded, looking closer at the symbols etched into the maroon fabric.

“But look,” Maren pointed to two diamonds intersecting in the center of the pattern. “There is a fifth spirit. It is said to be a bridge between us and Nature’s magic.”

Elsa’s face lit up, thankfully not with a blush this time. “A fifth spirit?”

“Some say... that they heard it call out the day before the mist fell,” Maren said. 

_A fifth spirit, calling out the day the mist fell-_

_There was this voice-_

“My father heard it…” Elsa said in awe. “Do you think that's this external voice that's calling me?” 

Maren shrugged, a smirk lighting up her face. “Maybe. Alas, only Ahtohallan knows.”

“Ahtohallan?” Elsa frowned, and a few tears sparked in her eyes at the memory. Her voice was cracking, fragile as she sang. “Dive deep into her sound…”

Maren’s lilted, melodic, hauntingly beautiful voice joined hers for the last part of the stanza. “But not too far, or you'll be drowned…” 

Maren’s pale brown, freckled cheeks, burst into a smile. And Elsa couldn’t help but smile too, a rush of happiness filling her chest. No-

Not _just_ happiness.

But _hope._

“Why do lullabies always have to have some terrible warning in them?” Maren said after a few heartbeats of quiet chuckles. Elsa shrugged, stroking the reindeer in her lap. And, feeling brave, she rode out the rush of hope as if it were her own.

“I wonder about that all the time.”

She didn’t. She had no idea why she said that.

Maren chuckled, placing her hand over Elsa's.

And Elsa, for once, felt complete.

_(Na na na heyana hahiyaha naha…)_

Elsa lay, curled up, on a frozen floor, fingertips blue. Every slight tremor that shook her body brought on a wave of agony. The hopelessness was so crushing that it was hard to bear. But she had to bear it, for… well, for the truth. Because the truth would give so many people a chance at a real life. A better one than the one that Arendelle had condemned them to. That _her grandfather_ had condemned them to. Elsa had to bear this agony, she had to pay for his mistakes, and if she had to do that alone… So be it.

Elsa’s heart fluttered, reminding her that there was still someone there. But that someone had abandoned her, had never been there, especially when she’d been so alone through her pain.

And they deserved to stay for a happy life.

 _I’m sorry that I can’t stay for you,_ Elsa thought. Her heart thumped against her chest, still beating in a rhythmic pattern of hope. Elsa recognized the trapped feeling behind it, having felt it ghosting her emotions all her life, but it was less strong now. It was beating behind a pattern of hope.

The mist, once more, clouded her vision, a chill settling too deep in her bones.

“I'M SORRY!!!!!!” Elsa screamed. “I’M SORRY THAT I CAN’T STAY FOR YOU! JUST TAKE CARE OF ANNA FOR ME, JUST TAKE CARE OF HER, PLEASE-”

Elsa forced herself to her feet with a howl. The ice crackled around her ankles, her shaking arms pressed into her chest at any hope of finding unfindable heat. 

“You see, the Dam will weaken their lands, so they will have to turn to me,” the memory of her grandfather spoke, turning to a gerd by his side. An evil, manipulative grin plastered across his face that Elsa so wanted to slap off... But she couldn’t. She couldn’t do _anything._ “They will come in celebration, and then we will know their size and strength…”

_“As you have welcomed us, we welcome you. Our neighbors, our friends.”_

It was so _wrong._

_Numb, empty, silent._

“King Runeard, the Dam isn't strengthening our waters, it's hurting the forest. It's cutting off the North-” the Northuldra leader spoke, alerting the snow figure of King Runeard. Elsa wanted to spit the name. But she was so-

**_So lost, no sense of direction to guide her in this turmoil, these tunneled waters._ **

“Let's not discuss this here. Let's… meet at noon, at tea, find a solution,” Runeard said, pressing his large palm onto the Northuldra leader’s back and guiding him to a clearing, with only stones to sit on.

“No,” Elsa choked out. “No.” 

She could barely breathe, her ankles falling numb and decorated in swirling snowflakes as the agony traveled further up her legs. She let out a whimper of pain as her hand brushed across the frost on her shoulder, sticking to the icy cold. The misty figures continued to drawl further into the cavern and Elsa trailed behind them as fast as she could. She stood there, trembling, as she watched the Northuldra leader sink to his knees before a pot of what seemed to be some sort of tea or broth. From behind her, there was the metallic sound of a sword being unsheathed, and Elsa quickly ducked out of the way as the ice figure of her grandfather pushed aggressively in front of her, moving behind the head of the Northuldra, his sword rising above his head. "For Arendelle," he snarled. 

_“NO!”_ Elsa panted, stumbling toward him, extending one arm as she tried to grasp for the edge of his cloak. But her feet stuck to the ground, her knees losing all feeling in them completely. 

The effort to just blink brought on a wave of anguish. Her hand clasped above her heart.

Was this… the cold?

“I am Elsa, I am Elsa…”

Wasn’t she? 

“The cold doesn’t bother me…” 

Tears froze to her cheeks as they spilled over ice-encrusted eyelashes, her lungs screaming for air that she couldn’t get. “No, no, no-”

She felt herself starting to sob and hyperventilate as she lost all sense of identity that she thought she had.

If this was the end, what did that make her? 

If this was her demise - at the hands of the one thing that had never even _bothered_ her before, what did that make her?

Weak?

“Who am I?” she whispered, her fingertips freezing to her chest. “Anymore?”

It didn’t matter who she was. Not anymore. Anna needed to know the truth. 

_I’m leaving you behind…_ Elsa thought. _And I’m never even gonna get to know who you really are. I’ll never be certain that I really have someone out there for me._

The only thing Elsa was sure of anymore was that she loved Anna, more than anything or anyone else. Even… even her own self. Elsa wasn’t even sure who she was anymore, not as her breath was being stolen by the freezing wind. _I love you,_ she gasped for air and didn’t get it, her lungs burning as she winced and doubled over in pain. _I love you,_ “Anna!”

A bolt of light shot from her fingertips into the frosted, crisp air of Ahtohallan. 

Then, there was nothing left.

_There was nothing left at all._

_(Naheya heya na yanuwa anhahe yunuwana…)_

Elsa floated along somewhere, sinking slowly into the waves as regret after fear after tormenting sadness weighed her heart down. She’d failed, hadn’t she? Like she always did, she’d lost. And if she hadn’t failed her purpose, if she hadn’t failed the thing she’d been born to do - restore and bring peace to the forest. Destroy the Dam. Balance the spirit and the human worlds. If she hadn’t failed that-

Well, she’d failed Anna, hadn’t she? She’d failed her soulmate, whoever they might have been. She’d failed the person waiting for her to come, just because she’d done something stupid and died for it. 

_Not stupid,_ a little voice in the back of her mind told her. _You did the right thing. What Runeard did was stupid, not you._

Snow pattered Elsa’s face, freezing to her pale cheeks. A storm raged somewhere behind her, but she barely felt its effects further than the sprinkle of snow. 

_You did what you had to do,_ she tried to tell herself. But the dark cloud of doubt overcame her, eating her up alive.

But Anna… Elsa had left her behind, as always…

She always did that. She always pushed the people she cared about away. She was so stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid-

She’d sent Anna away, she’d sent Anna _away_ and it was so stupid and- 

She’d failed Anna, she’d failed her baby sister. 

She’d failed herself. Elsa of Arendelle. She’d given up and flurried away.

She’d failed the Northuldra too. She’d failed saving them from the mist, like she’d promised. She hadn’t kept her promise to them, she hadn’t kept any of her promises to Anna, she hadn’t kept her promises to herself. She’d said that she could stay alive and return to find out who was calling her, who was calling her in her heart and yet-

She was alone again.

_Anna… Elsa… The Northul-_

The words floated around in her brain, swirling in dizzying haze.

And as quickly as they appeared, they were gone.

_“I finally know who you are, Elsa… Please don’t let me lose you, not so soon after I found you!”_

A warm, honey-sweet voice trinkled like a lazy-flowing stream into the back of her mind. 

Of her-

Of-

 _"Don't go-"_ a second voice chimed in. It was so far, so far away, that Elsa could barely grasp it-

_“El….”_

A third voice, one of strawberries and warmth and sweet campfires, burned a hole into her thoughts.

And then, there was something so close to silence, that she wasn’t sure there was sound. But she could hear something faint, a far-away melody floating by her ears.

 _It’s peaceful,_ she thought, _yet I’m alone again… isn’t that just the way I was always meant to be?_

Alone.

Alone.

Alo-

Silence. Empty, suffocating silence.

_(Are you the one that’s been haunting me…)_

_(A ghost of my own design?)_

_(Someone out there who’s a little bit like me?)_

_(Is that you?)_

_(Who are you?)_

“JUST WAKE UP! PLEASE, ELSA, DON'T GIVE UP NOW-”

 _Keep calling for me,_ she thought. _Because one day, I'll find you_ _..._

.

.

.

_._

_._

_(Are you the one that I’ve been looking for all of my life?)_

Elsa opened her eyes.

_(Are you the way I finally find out why?)_

Elsa sat up.

_(_ _Here I am, I've come so far!)_

Elsa looked into Honeymaren’s rich, chocolatey eyes. 

_(You are the answer that I’ve waited for…)_

Elsa gasped.

_(All of my life.)_

“It’s _you.”_

**Author's Note:**

> hahahah I know it made no sense but I loved writing this i don't know  
> i swear that i can write less than three-thousand words at a time. just you wait. okay now get me away before i start singing. anyway i've had the image of kristoff singing you'll be back in my head for far too long
> 
> to clear up the fuzzier details: after the dam fell and elsa was all like, yeet my bros i'm not dead, the Nokk carried unconscious Elsa back to the forest, but she's unconscious so you can't see that - that's what I was trying to say with the whole "she floated somewhere, yada yada" thing. Also some point in there, Maren was like. Oh shit. Elsa's my soulmate. And then Elsa was like half dead so anna and maren were all "I REFUSE TO ACCEPT THIS" and yeah. Then Elsa woke up and the world was cool again. (except for having to rebuild arendelle but that's a problem for another day.) ...well that read like a crackfic. 
> 
> (Also, random hc for this au - Maren's got two dads. Did you need to know that? no. they don't appear in this. but she does have 'em.)
> 
> AND FINALLY BECAUSE I JUST NEED TO SAY THIS - one of my all-time favorite books that's being made into a movie... like... I just learned the official release date of the movie? And i cried maybe? (It's the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness. YA, but beautifully written and I just-) ~~Also maybe I drew upon his style at the end of the final book to write this. You can't prove anything.~~ I'm just. The books made me cry more than I care to admit and It's just. i have an emotion about this.


End file.
